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Changing Lives |
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Compassion Spotlight
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The Need
The generosity and personal sacrifice of individual Americans has always played a crucial role in responding to the needs facing our Nation, our communities and our neighbors.
Volunteers are the lifeblood of the nonprofit sector. Four out of five charities registered with the IRS—an estimated 174,000 organizations—rely on volunteers to solve the toughest problems faced across the country from homelessness and addiction, to at-risk youth and hunger.
An estimated 400,000 non-registered charities in the U.S. also deliver social services—many of them entirely through volunteer service.
The Response
American citizens provide a vast number of hours of service and financial support that enable faith-based and community organizations (FBCOs) to address the full spectrum of human needs.
According to the latest data from Giving USA, Americans set an all-time record of more than $300 billion in charitable gifts during 2007. Read more about the Giving USA Study.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 60.8 million Americans volunteered in 2007, with each providing an average of 52 hours.
Nearly 36% of volunteers served through faith-based organizations, followed by 26% with educational or youth-service organizations, and 13% with social and community service organizations.
While sharing of one’s time, skills, or money to aid a neighbor in need is a personal choice, this decision can be encouraged and facilitated nationally in a range of ways. The President honors volunteers with the President’s Volunteer Service Award (PVSA) for those who have answered his Call to Service. To date, President Bush has personally awarded more than 700 PVSAs, reminding us all that “to whom much is given, much is required.”
Alongside these efforts to invigorate America’s spirit of service and giving, the President’s Administration has created and/or enhanced robust national initiatives to expand volunteerism and giving.
USA Freedom Corps
President Bush created USA Freedom Corps (USAFC) in 2002 to strengthen the culture of service, citizenship, and responsibility in America. Working closely with the Corporation for National and Community Service, Peace Corps, and other agencies, USAFC promotes and expands volunteer service by partnering with national service programs, strengthening the non-profit sector, honoring volunteers, and helping to connect individuals with volunteer opportunities.
Peace Corps volunteerism is at a 37-year high, with over 8,000 volunteers serving in 74 countries, engaging needs from education and health to the environment.
AmeriCorps has grown to provide slots for approximately 75,000 members annually. In 2007 alone, these members mobilized and/or managed 1.7 million community volunteers.
Senior Corps helps support the volunteerism of nearly 500,000 senior volunteers annually, totaling over 100 million hours in service—from mentoring at-risk youth to aiding other seniors in need.
Learn and Serve America last year alone supported 1,700 grantees that engaged more than 1.4 million students in service-learning projects totaling 27.9 million community service hours.
Citizen Corps has grown since its launch in 2002 to serve over 78% of the population through nearly 2,300 Councils nationwide, which support a range of disaster preparedness efforts.
Take Pride in America was re-launched at the U.S. Department of Interior in 2003. Today, it supports more than 100 partners and 30,000 skilled volunteers who are helping to preserve and protect America’s public lands.
Volunteers for Prosperity has helped mobilize more than 74,000 volunteers through over 350 public/private partnerships to promote health and prosperity in developing countries.
USA Freedom Corps Volunteer Network is the largest clearinghouse of volunteer opportunities, offering more than four million volunteer opportunities both in the U.S. and abroad. Since its creation in 2002, more than two million volunteer opportunity searches have been performed by over 22 million site visitors.
President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation: In January 2003, President Bush created the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation, bringing together leaders from the worlds of business, entertainment, sports, education, government, philanthropy, and the media to grow the spirit of service in America and to recognize the important contributions citizens of all ages are making within their communities through service and civic engagement.
Expanding Federal Partnership with Frontline Nonprofits
As part of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative, the Federal Government has launched numerous grants programs and other strategies that greatly expand Federal partnerships with FBCOs serving their neighbors at the grassroots level. In addition to their other strengths, these organizations have a great capacity to recruit and manage volunteers. In 2007 alone, more than 19,000 competitive Federal grants were awarded to FBCOs for services to the needy.
For example, 247 small FBCOs received mini-grants (typically $25,000 to $75,000) from the U.S. Department of Labor Grassroots Grants Program to help high-need individuals find and succeed in employment. These groups multiplied the impact of the Federal funds by collectively leveraging 89,875 volunteer hours. Among other outcomes, these volunteers helped the FBCOs place more than 15,000 of the hardest-to-serve clients of the Federal Workforce System in jobs.
Tax Policies
New tax policies promoted by the Administration have helped to stimulate charitable giving and activity.
To support families willing to love and care permanently for children without parents, President Bush championed a major expansion of the adoption tax credit in 2001—from $5,000 to $10,000 per child, indexed for inflation. The latest-available data show a significant increase in the number of adoptive families using this credit, from under 48,000 in 2001 to almost 85,000 families in 2005. Financial support grew by over 250 percent—from less than $90 million in 2001 to nearly $320 million in 2005.
The IRA Rollover provision included in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 incentivizes retired taxpayers to donate from their IRA funds to charities. The National Committee on Planned Giving reports that within the first (and only) year, over 6,000 individual gifts were donated through IRA rollover, totaling over $111 million to the nonprofit sector. A second important provision allowed tax deductions for donations of food or books to pantries and schools.1
Private Giving
Alongside the President’s personal calls to the American people to respond generously to human need, a range of specific initiatives help foster and guide this generosity:
The Pro Bono Challenge was launched in 2008 by the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation and USA Freedom Corps as a 3-year campaign to leverage $1 billion in skilled volunteering and pro-bono services from the corporate sector. Pro Bono Champions have responded, already collectively pledging $129 million in professional services to help nonprofits address critical social needs.
The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund was launched in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, when President Bush called on President George H.W. Bush and President Bill Clinton to help raise support for groups working to rebuild devastated communities and restore lives. These efforts raised $130 million—100 percent of which flowed to Gulf Coast renewal efforts, primarily those led by FBCOs. Read more about the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund. 
Public-Private Partnerships
By enlisting private sector partners in Federal projects to address poverty and other challenges, government multiplies its impact through private funding, expertise, and other resources.
The Global Development Alliance (GDA) at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) works to forge alliances between the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to stimulate economic growth, develop businesses and workforces, and address a range of other needs. Since 2001, GDA has cultivated over 680 alliances with more than 1,700 individual partners and leveraged over $9 billion in combined public-private sector resources.
The Economic Development Administration (EDA) at the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) is using the same strategy to restore and revitalize distressed American neighborhoods through public-private investment in nonprofit solutions. In 2007 alone, EDA invested $277 million in 748 projects, with an anticipated benefit of creating close to 52,000 jobs and more than $5.4 billion in private sector investment.
1 The provisions for charitable giving incentives legislated in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 expired in December 2007. However, legislation has been introduced before Congress to make these incentives permanent and available for the benefit of the nonprofit sector.
